We are doing neither. We believe that there are more than enough training agencies both for profit and non profit. The object of some training agencies is to get big, franchise their programs to as many members as possible and sell diving, in one form or another to every man woman and child on the planet. The members at the top of those pyramids, who rule those training entities,  enjoy the same rewards and fame that are typical of any Fortune 500 Corporation. With the non profit groups the most elite members maintain their status thru self invention and cronyism.  Cronyism also plays a major role in the for profit dive business. Personal dive skills are often trumped by connections within the fraternity and status is determined by who knows whom. The major training agencies have global tentacles but the quality of their product  is often  diluted by loss of control over the sizable membership, most of whom only excel at salesmanship.
We have little taste or talent for selling! BuoyancyQuest has no intention of becoming a certification agency, to wit we do not offer c-cards as a reward for your business, we do not include social networking and we have no plans to expand our staff beyond two. It is not our goal to keep you as a customer forever! We pose only a tiny threat to the big guy's, all important,  pie chart. Diving is not like the old west and we are not gunfighters. We do not claim to be "THE BEST" at frog kick & buoyancy skills. We may be among the best but more important than, who is best, is the fact that we stick to mentoring the skills that we do best. We offer only our best! For some divers that may be the missing link that they seek. For a few brave seasoned divers, who must swallow their pride,  it may be more like rehab but please don't think of us as the Betty Ford of Buoyancy. We are just a couple of dive instructors who look the part underwater and are willing to share what we know. This is why we offer this workshop, as a fun-filled dive travel experience outside the United States. We offer real visual examples to support the rhetoric and hype that by now you must be familiar with from every tutorial or essay, on buoyancy, that you have ever read.
As for exceeding standards; there can be many interpretations of that phrase. It can mean the dinosaur of an instructor who believed that diving was only for strong young men and felt justified in surprising his students by ripping off their masks. It can mean dangerous "ditch and recovery" skills that really served no purpose beyond egotistic chest thumping. In short exceeding standards can and sometimes does mean a maverick macho cowboy! OR exceeding standards can mean; "Don't show your students too much and make the rest of us look bad."  "Don't be better than the status quo!" Becoming a dive professional is subject to the same rules as most other professions but do we really understand those rules? "Anyone can succeed!" we are told. But remember that the master plan may be that: Everyone can't succeed! You must decide if diving is a contest to prove who is best or a more personal quest for excellence. The irony, of course,  is that most of the divers who see things as a contest, look like anything but winners underwater. Your LDS, the Dive Resorts you visit and the instructors who own or are employed by them come together under the umbrella of the International Training Agency that they are partnered with to train customers so that they can sell them more stuff. Customers are not the same as divers and it is not always in the best interest of "the recreational dive business" to create divers. Selling is the primary goal and salesmenship is more important, to them,  than watermanship. Your sucess is your responsibility.  Make sure that your mentor or instructor is more than a salesman! We may be poor salesmen but we don't believe that sharing what we know about frog kick & buoyancy skills means exceeding standards!
Apply the same rules you would in the rest of the world to selecting SCUBA Training. The rules by which you might grade your boss, for example. Does that person hold claim to their status by merit or did they gain their position thru patronage? Finding good dive guidance is like most things in life, it often comes down to the question of: " Is this or that worth the paper it is printed on?" If it walks like a duck it may, in fact, be a duck and if it sounds or looks like a salesman, it probably is a salesman. If it is primarily a salesman or only a salesman you will be unlikely to learn much about SCUBA Fundamentals.,
If it is your intention to seek training with us, you should know that the person who provides most of the mentoring that is offered by BuoyancyQuest, was born in the first half of the 20th century. Don't wait too long!